An Online Magazine of the Arts by Women Over Sixty

Menu

International Poets

Selected by Hilda Raz, Guest Editor

What a pleasure to read submissions from women poets all over the world!

The poems I’ve chosen for this issue of Persimmon Tree have in common a commitment to language and form. Their subjects are varied but seem to me to speak of engagements with our time of life – pleasure and memory and the other grand abstractions that take on flesh as we grow older in this lovely and vexed world.

From our everlasting responsibility to presentation – we brush and comb our hair each day – through musing over memory albums, the merging of the written page with the life it represents, the joy our senses bring us and the losses we experience, our mouths are packed with languages and violations and our brains busy transposing Fibonacci sequences and lessons in printing we’d learn in order to speak out loud, as well as numbers working as metaphor – all the poems here remind us to “fatten your/self on feeling. Fall back on all the music still alive.”

Thirteen Poems

Joanne Veiss-Zaken

Hairbrush

Cuts through hair
like a blind man
through a maze
feeling his way
up each curl
dumbfounded by each knot.

Starting at the bottom
slow ascent upward
climbing Kilimanjaro
all the while
cajoling-pleading-promising-bribing
threatening

Finally
when properly plaited
a sigh
and thoughts of tomorrow’s climb.

S.E. Ingraham

Could She But Care Less

Under cover
of a starless night
she risks taking it down,
—the tattered album—
Remembers to be careful.
Last time,
she had been hasty,
and pieces of her life
escaped the pages
and were
gone in a beat.

She spreads her
trembling hand loosely
on the page, raises her eyes
to peer at it; feels her
heartbeat quicken at the eyes
that meet hers.
She knows intellectually,
the baby’s cobalt eyes aren’t
truly looking into hers,
but her heart aches so, she
can’t convince it otherwise.

Afraid to turn the page,
she sits unmoving,
stroking the photo,
remembering the last time
she’d seen the babe—
How knowing,
his solemn expression.
She ponders if she’ll
see him again,
feels worries collecting
like crows flocking
Wonders if closing
the book will feel as careless
as opening it did.

Benita Kape

The Page and the River

The blank page has held brides, tiny tots and teens:
our forty-year-old selves staring jauntily at life. But
seldom introduces a woman of a certain age. Though
what the page embarks upon today is no small jaunt. Like
Simic’s Owl she sees herself phlegmatic; iron-willed therefore –

hold the pen proud to a once blank page, swift on the banks
of a river flowing deep; widening, widening. Practising our strokes,
our oars in sync heading down river, perfecting manoeuvres
or fractious diversions when nearing the rapids; or on the cry
of man overboard (three). And tripled our efforts.

But we have barely begun as our guides prepare a fully
cooked breakfast, coffee and tea, and I make conversation
with young couples and men all so much younger than me.
After steady overnight rain I see fear and sense it but the
gorge is steep and we cannot go back. I am one of a team.

The page now corrugated; up one line and down
the next. Twenty-six rapids ahead must be squeezed. You
have but one chance. The river boils and you struggle:
meditation, then, not calmness, but an adrenalin rush.
Someone remarks as to the secret of fitness. No escaping
the decades you are celebrating here. Send me
no card, just send me a river was to be our joke
as the corrugations ceased and the thrills and the drops
on what they called Class Four rapids; three days
rafting a flooded river came to an end.

My nostrils flare when I return to that landmark;
the page and the river.

Ellen S. Jaffe

Jam Today

“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.” White Queen to Alice, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll.

Last season’s
peach and gooseberry
sweet-tart on the tongue
spread on toast, muffins,
bagels with raisins
and cinnamon –
spice of the sabbath

now her body is jamming
itself, cells stuck and clogged
blocking the vital

at times supersonic at others lazy daisy
silky smooth or rough and ready

I wake up each morning
not knowing who’ll be on top

which one bursts out first,
who will crackle or pop

but they give me voice
they surprise me

they offer up form
they stupefy me

both

Caroline Cottom

The Ice in the Eaves

creaks like thieves
in a young girl’s heart
gives voice to the dark
and she without a choice
holds close her limbs
trembles in fear of him
who comes to say goodnight
who before he dims the light
touches here, lingers there,
wetly kisses, twists
his fingers in her hair
and as the planet darkens
out beyond the sandbox
the hollyhocks and yard
she watches Mars
draw near to Earth
threaten to collide
another touch
this one too much
as all will die
she sees it coming

Sarah Thomson

Fibonacci Poems

The Straits Hotel, Jahor Bahru

The
Straits
Hotel
You checked out
Fifty years ago
I was too late Jahor Bahru
Things we do when those we’ve loved live only in the past

The Polyester Bag

The
Beige
Bag that
Was yours is
Now with me and how
I wish that you could know I take
It everywhere I go, you would be so surprised!

The Rooftop Pool

I
Swim
At night
Singapore
Rooftops all around
And the water turns to frosted
Glass as I drift sideways under the whispering palms

Lois Elaine Heckman

Lasting Impressions

I learned the printing art in Father’s shop,
to put nicks up, to mind my p’s and q’s
inverted in composing sticks, to crop
mark on the page. He taught me how to choose
a substitute, when out of sorts, make use
of coppers, brasses, leads and slugs to space
the lines and words so nothing would be loose,
and where to place the letters in my case.
The glyphs had sections named for body parts,
whose necks, beards, hairlines, shoulders, faces, feet
turned types to soldier statuettes that marched
to life in rhythms of the press’s beat.

Those troops are quiet now, but I dream back,
cocooning in their whooshing roll and clack.

Sharon Goodier

About Facing

Sun was my undoingbrushing my face with feather warmthmelting frozen furrows to a tear </spanpoised on a trembling cheek

Sun tendered me

Wind was my undoingscraping the sand to let the sundig deeper into ruinspast previous incarnationsto my first and final face

Wind sifted me

Now are many buried days
resurrected nightsSun in the westwind in my bed

And on this morning, sun spilt
gold on grey pebbles under our back window.
Yesterday three bobcats, mama and two kits,
came there and slept the morning away. I swear!
They came panting, matted fur, skinny, fell down
in the shadows our house made, a shade not
much wider than they were stretched nose to tail.

There. I’ve finished the first stanza, Rispello.Eight line blocks, each one eleven syllables.
Four hours later the bobcats woke, went off,
their backs turned to us watching from the porch,
kits no longer skinny but still small, wind-fluffed
by breath come up to move clouds out of the way.
Below, we tiptoed fast around corners looking
to find them up the sandy hill. No, they’d gone.

Here’s one example of someone alive, afraid, counting life up against death with her fingers.Hear: that’s bobcats where we live. And coyotes
we track by listening, rarely see. And crows
as big as hawks. And hawks and eagles. Rabbits.
More. Jackrabbits, twice as big as dogs. And snakes.
I could make a catalogue, hummers we feed
with sweets, mountain jays, yet why bother? Death’s face

obscures. Yet now chamisa is in bloom all over the arroyo. See what I mean? Yellow.
The world is fractals, numbers. Still the world rots.
But is not lost. Enough. Look out. Where cats were,
now on the wall a lizard waits in sun for lunch.
My love is melting sugar in red water
for hummingbirds, migrating. Our cat is out
in the atrium, sleeping in sunshine, calico

coat aflame. Jacob wore one, a gift, in fear
of his brothers. He was right. Death’s robe, no color,
covered him then he was gone to Egypt, lost.
His jealous brothers and their father also grieved.A gift of death turned into exile is good?Do I think I’ve made an argument for life?
Not here. Not now. Though we are old many others
die as babes in arms in gowns or rags wrapped close,

like these bobcats cared for by each another so
sleep weaves them into one body. Then they go.
As I will, that’s the truth, the rub, the whitewash
no one buys (she favors an enamel crème
to cover better).Reader, will you sing out
a theme from Bach to comfort us listeners
sore from hospital, sickness, stitches, bloody
wounds, recovery sure or not? Bless us.

First Dark

Must we give up desire, ambition, goals,
ideas the invulnerable body, the lack of pain –
pray for it, pray for it – in order to empty mind
learn control of breath, blood, life
continues through plants and beasts, snow
melts, sun rises and sets day in, day out, birds
wing against sun, the sway of the feedersthe single sun drop
caught at the corner of the feeders, pink
snared by mountains at sunset
sit just where I can see pink highlight
coming the crags of dark
oh coming

Caroline Cottom is a spiritual teacher and former director of the coalition of 75 national organizations that brought an end to nuclear test explosions in Nevada, described in her memoir, Love Changes Things, Even in the World of Politics. She also co-authored The Isle of Is: A Guide to Awakening with her husband Thom Cronkhite. Her poetry has appeared in Silk Road, Serving House Journal, and Pennsylvania English, among others. You can visit Cottom on her blog, www.lovechangesthings.net, and in the GoodReads group, "Love and Social Change."
Meredith Escudier has lived in France for over 35 years, teaching, translating and raising a family. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Imitation Fruit, Writers Workshop Review, Alimentum, New Verse News, the International Herald Tribune and others. She is the author of three books: Scene in France, Frenchisms for Francophiles and most recently a food memoir, The Taste of Forever, an affectionate examination of home cooks that features an American mother and a French husband.
Sharon Goodier, a poet from Toronto, Canada, has had poems published in Carte Blanche (Montreal), Dove Tales Nature Anthology (U.S. 2015) and Adana, an anthology of women’s spirituality. In 2016 her poetry appeared in Koru and Quilliad. In 2017, she will appear in Porcupine Anthology, Tin Lunchbox. Her poems can be found on the website for Poets Reading the News. She is a founding member of the renewed Art Bar Reading Series. She hosts readings and reads widely around Toronto
Lois Elaine Heckman is from Los Angeles, where she received a degree in Italian at UCLA. She now lives in Milan, Italy. Her works have been presented in Tilt-a-Whirl, Prole, Boston Literary Magazine, YJHM and, previously, in Persimmon Tree, among others. She won the final NESF Rubber Ducky Sonnet Contest and the 2013 Winning Writers Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for traditional verse, also achieving recognition in other international competitions, such as those sponsored by Poetry on the Lake, Hungry Hill, and Cannon Poets. Her chapbook, Out of Nowhere, was published by Kelsay Books (White Violet Press).
S.E. Ingraham, a retired mental health consumer, writes from Canada's most northern provincial capital, Edmonton, Alberta. Her poems appear in print and on-line, and one poem is even carved in stone in a sidewalk in her hometown. Recent successes include her poem in "Poets 4 Paris," her first to be printed in both English and French, plus several on the site, "I Am Not a Silent Poet." A long-time peace advocate, she is happiest when her work reflects her philosophy. More of her poetry may be found on her blogs: http://soundofthewordnight.blogspot.ca/ or http://whenthepenbleeds.blogspot.ca/Ellen S. Jaffe grew up in New York City, emigrated to Canada in 1979, and lives in Hamilton, Ontario. Her poetry collection, Skinny-Dipping with the Muse (Guernica Editions, 2014), was nominated for the 2015 Hamilton Literary Awards. Other books include Water Children, Feast of Lights, and Writing Your Way. Her writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era. She teaches writing in schools and community centers, and has worked as a psychotherapist. She has one son, who recently switched careers from social work to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Born in South Africa, Kath Jonathan has lived in Toronto for most of her life. She feels fortunate to be writing, teaching, and photographing in this amazing city. Jonathan was a finalist for the Janice Colbert Poetry Award, SCS, University of Toronto. She’s been a featured reader at the Art Bar Poetry Reading Series. An excerpt from her novel in progress, The Grave Sculptor, was awarded honourable mention for the Penguin Random House Fiction Award, SCS, University of Toronto and published in a chapbook. She’s recently published in Don’t Talk to Me About Love, an on-line literary journal.
Benita Kape lives in Gisborne (Tairawhiti), New Zealand. On-line, her poems have appeared in nzepc Oban 06 and Fugacity 05. She loves the Japanese short forms, and her work also appears in Haibun Today and Simply Haiku. Her poems have also appeared in a fine line, New Zealand Poetry Society’s magazine and in Kokako, a N.Z. journal devoted to the Japanese form. More recently Kape has been published in Manifesto Aotearoa 101 Political Poems. Her poem “The Page and the River” has specially been written for Persimmon Tree.
Hilda Raz is Luschei Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, emerita, University of Nebraska. She was the fifth editor of the venerable literary quarterly Prairie Schooner and continues to write and edit as director of the endowed Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series, University of New Mexico Press, and poetry editor of the magazine Bosque. Her twelve published books include poetry, memoir, and essays, and her work has been widely published in journals. She lives and works in Placitas, New Mexico.
Sarah Thomson was born and raised in the UK and developed a love of writing from an early age. Having studied English at the University of Exeter, Sarah went on to have a varied career in publishing, accountancy, and Human Resources. Her writing is often inspired by new experiences and challenges. In addition to the UK, she has lived and worked in The Netherlands and Singapore, but Sarah always looks forward to returning to her much loved family and home in Bristol.
Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Joanne Veiss-Zaken writes from her home in Jerusalem, Israel. Her poetry and prose have been published in Voices Israel, Love in Israel, 65 Short Stories, and Spoila Online Magazine.